Caribbean Star Iyaz: My Project With Miley Cyrus Took Me By Surprise

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Caribbean star Iyaz, who was honored at an event on the Lower East Side Tuesday night, said his latest project with tween queen Miley Cyrus came as a bit of a surprise -- not only to his fans but also to him.

“I did a song for [an artist] and the producer put me with Miley Cyrus," Iyaz said Tuesday at the Steve Madden event on the Lower East Side in his honor.

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"I didn’t know that he would actually put us on a song together. I thought it would just be like a writer’s session."

Iyaz, originally from the Virgin Islands, said he's bringing his brand of "Island Pop" to his collaboration with the starlet. The multiplatinum artist whose pop jam "Replay" was a top10-hit also lent his talent to the charity single "We Are the World 25 for Haiti."

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“I was blessed," he said. "That’s like me winning a Grammy. I just was honored to be a part of it. When I told my mom she was ecstatic, she went crazy.”

Iyaz, who's working on his own music too, also said he hoped to keep the devastation in Haiti at the forefront of the national conversation.

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“Don’t ever stop supporting. Lend a hand … any way you can,” he said. “They don’t just need money, they need people to uplift them. They need music, they need everything right now. [Just] because you don’t see it on the news, it doesn’t mean it went away. “